At last he reached the firm, frosty high-road, and breathed freely once more. He let the horse walk, as it was in a perspiration; but it wanted to get home to its stable, and soon broke into a trot again.
In the wood the sledge-bells sounded loud and clear. The fir-trees stretched their snow-laden branches overhead, leaving here and there a glimpse of the starry sky above.
Norby was now passing farms with lights in the windows. The largest of them, standing up on the hill, was Rud, which Norby’s enemies maintained was larger than Norby’s place. It was here that his great rival lived, the wealthy Mads Herlufsen of Rud.
Norby could see this farm from his own sitting-room window; and as time went on it became impossible for him to think of Herlufsen without seeing in his mind’s eye his farm-buildings, the woods around, the hill behind—the whole thing like a troll with its head towards the sky; and it was all Mads Herlufsen sitting there and keeping watch upon Norby.
“And now when he hears this, how he will exult!”
His worries, which had vanished in the possibility of danger out on the ice, now returned, and he recollected having seen Wangen intoxicated on several occasions in town. “And that’s the man I’ve helped!”
At last he turned up an avenue, at the end of which could be seen the dark mass of the Norby buildings against the fir-clad slope. In the large dwelling-house there were lights in only two or three of the windows. A large black dog came bounding towards Knut with delighted barks, leaping up in front of the horse, which snapped at it.
The stable-man came with a lantern, and held the horse while Norby, stiff with sitting still so long, got slowly out of the sledge.
Beams of light flickered across the snow from lanterns passing in and out of the doors of the cow-sheds and stables that surrounded the large farm-yard on three sides. To the left of the barn stood a separate little dwelling-house, in which lived as pensioners old disabled servants, whom Norby would not allow to become a burden upon the parish.